Doug Aitken: Psychic Debris Field

Regen Projects is pleased to present Psychic Debris Field, an exhibition of new work by Los Angeles-based artist Doug Aitken.

In Psychic Debris Field, Aitken sets forth a poly-media composition of artworks that create a narrative which explores the juxtaposition of deep ecological history within our landscape and contemporary habitation. The artworks create a fever-dream interpretation of our landscape ranging from large-scale sculptures created from urban debris, light and sound installations, botanic artworks, and fabric works that seamlessly combine these mediums.

At the show’s entrance, viewers are greeted by P-22 (2024), a larger-than-life sculptural form of the famed wild western mountain lion which resided majestically in the Hollywood Hills for many years. The sculpture is made entirely out of foraged materials found within the urban landscape. These include microplastics washed up on the Pacific Coast, discarded freeway rubber repurposing used tires, composted seeds, and organic matter. Over eighty materials are compressed into strata to form the likeness of the mountain lion and condense it into a contemporary vessel comprised of the landscape around us.

The first room of the exhibition is anchored by three large sculptures of North American bison made from reclaimed computerpacking foam. The stoic animals frozen as sculptures in their chalky white material command a presence empty of color and alluding to a phantom landscape, a Fata Morgana of an ecosystem that was. Yet somehow two of these artworks are in a state of continuous transformation, filled with fertile earth and vegetation, with plants and vines cascading from them and continuing the cycle of regrowth. In the third bison, cutaways reveal an interior of Styrofoam carved into machine-like shapes, suggesting microchips or an electronic infrastructure. Surrounding these are tapestries created during the making of Lightscape, Aitken’s multimedia project including music, film, and installation components realized in collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. These hand-sewn and digitally printed wall works informed and acted as storyboards throughout the process. Each has the same repeating composition of a house, pool, and horizon. Together they construct a timeline of our continuously altered landscape from pre-human to ideas of post-human occupation.

In the second room, an encompassing installation generates a tableau of the North American landscape which deploys light, a vocal original composition, and sculpture in an immersive choreography. The sound collage repeats the phrases:

When I move I see things more clearly...
When I move
When I move I see
When I move I see things
When I move I see things more clearly
Clearly

The vocal patterns that cycle and repeat in different inflections range from violence to warmth. For Aitken, the patterns of the song evoke the minimal language of Samuel Beckett, Bruce Nauman, and Joan Didion. This room is dramatically darker, and as the viewer’s eyes adjust, a primary central sculpture of two large stags colliding, their interlocking horns glowing with an ever-changing radiating light, becomes clear. Other figures then emerge: cacti crafted from rusted Cor-ten steel; an ice machine containing live cactus plants; a bus stop; indigenous birds — all suggesting a mysterious, variegated landscape. Here, the material and dematerial flow through an infinite range of auditory, visual, and spatial possibilities. As the lighting changes, the song cycle progresses to form a haunting liminal space that appears to exist somewhere between the natural and built environments. The composition of light and sound become our narrative structure as the sculptures within the space speak to each other in a surreal connectivity.

In a small separate gallery, a sculptural totem of three mountain lions and crates create an abstraction as each form twists and spirals upwards. Their bodies consist of hundreds of thousands of seeds and organic materials. Lining the gallery’s long corridor are three of Aitken’s iconic Aperture lightboxes, emphasizing the contrasts between dark and light, interior and exterior space.

Lightscape premiered at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on November 16 with the film accompanied by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Lightscape as a large-scale multi-screen installation is currently at the Marciano Art Foundation where it will remain on view through March 15, 2025.